Day: September 23, 2012

Perhaps, and this is a theory that it is impossible to substantiate, Sir Alex Ferguson has come to realise a fundamental truth of football which frequently seems to slip under our radar. It doesn’t matter whether you play well or not. It’s a result-based business and what matters, all that matters, is getting that result. Manchester United were poor at Anfield this afternoon, but when the ball needed to roll for them it rolled for them, when they needed referee Mark Halsey to make misjudgements, they got them. They came away from Anfield this afternoon with all three points, when all bar the most one-eyed could only consider that they might even have deserved none. For Liverpool, meanwhile, luck has become a precious commodity, something that others have while they do not. If it does, as legend would have it, even itself out over the course of a season, Liverpool are due a slice of luck of lottery-winning proportions at some point this season. First, though, came the preliminaries. Prior to the match, Sir Bobby Charlton presented flowers to Ian Rush, which was followed by a rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone which sent shivers down the spine and almost lifted the roof off the Kop end of the ground whilst mosaics saying “The Truth” and “Justice For The 96” reminded all watching of an issue of greater significance...

This afternoon, we continue our series of archive matches from the clubs of the Football League Championship with Ipswich Town. A league championship win in 1962 proved to be a flash in the pan for this club, whose greatest years would come more than a decade after this win, and we have seven matches from the years between 1972 and 2000, with our focus very much on the decade between 1972 and 1982. Our first match comes from opening day of the 1972/73 season and takes Ipswich Town to Old Trafford to play a Manchester United side that was in serious decline, just four years after winning the European Cup, whilst our second match comes from the following season and sees Ipswich at home against Arsenal in March 1974. Our third match comes from January 1977, and sees Ipswich at home against Wolverhampton Wanderers in an FA Cup Fourth Round match, and this is followed up with a home match against the then-champions Nottingham Forest from 1979. A year later, Ipswich are on their travels again, to play Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux, and we follow this up with a trip to Highfield Road to play Coventry City. The last of our seven matches, finally, sees Ipswich Town travel to Wembley to play Barnsley in the 2000 First Division Play-Off Final in the last club match to be played at...